


The World Burning

by KIBITZER



Series: Cold Magnet Earth [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Also The Part Where Salem Is Alone With Her Thoughts For A REAL Long Time (YIKES), Alternate Universe - Old World Is The Moon, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Retelling, Suicidal Thoughts, V6E3, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21799765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/pseuds/KIBITZER
Summary: A death by starvation was nothing. It ached and destroyed her and then she rose again.So they had told her the truth.They weren’t the only ones capable of telling the truth.____This series is an expanded retelling of the story of v6e3, with some alterations and AU elements.
Series: Cold Magnet Earth [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541866
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

The day Ozma died was the singularity. It was the core of a black hole. It was the fissure drawing all matter and thought into itself, the mind-killer that aborted any future ideas, that halted her life in its tracks.

They had been sick. She had been helpless. So helpless. It went so fast, yet so tortuously slow. Their health came apart like links in a chain twisting from each other, mangled metal and organs alike. There had been decay and suffering in the house for five days; now there was silence. Only silence.

It was in the middle of the week and the world around her simply kept turning as if nothing had happened.

Her first response was numb. She sat hopelessly by the body, thinking nothing at all. She couldn’t even speak. Couldn’t bring herself to confront this. Like her brain shut down all capability of emotion. Like she was protecting herself by closing her eyes and turning away from reality.

But it couldn’t last; of course it couldn’t last.

Once feelings set in, she refused to accept it. Ozma could not die. This—this could not be happening, simply could not, by any law of the fair universe. She had prayed over them for nights inexhaustible, sworn herself and all her worth over and over, weighed the world on the scale and found it came up light compared to the value of Ozma. She prayed for relief, for justice, for healing. She prayed for mercy.

But nobody answered.

She was reminded of Umbra. How it fell into the sea despite its faith. How that had changed Ozma’s life, how it had diverted them from their path and onto her own. They carried Umbran faith with them until they died, nonetheless, regardless of Umbra’s fate.

Now she wondered how they could stand it.

It wasn’t fair.

She didn’t know how she ended up at the Light Realm and its Altar but when she came to, when she reconnected with herself, that’s where she was. She held Ozma’s staff and remembered: they were dead, buried by Umbran tradition, in fire and water. She had prepared the body; their friends had come to see it, to say farewell, and then together they lit the pyre. It was all a blur to her, but not truly forgotten. She was losing time to grief, but she was not losing her memory quite yet. She felt woozy and unclear but she knew at once what she wanted: fairness.

“It’s not fair,” she plead. “I beg of you. Bring Ozma back.”

And God refused.

It wasn’t fair. She could feel her mind spinning out like a cart with no rider. Could feel the spiral quicken and darken. She didn’t have anywhere else to go—she didn’t have anyone else to turn to. She was Salem and that was all she had. All she had ever had. She killed her father, now so long ago, and gone away with Ozma—and then Ozma was all she had—and now—

She was a horse with three broken legs. She was already shattered once by the blades called family and she had an ugly suspicion that wounds like those never heal.

She felt it now. That old wound throbbing in her chest. A primordial ache like no other. Bestial and feral and vicious and red and oozing. The pain in her chest flared to a fever pitch, to panic height, as she sat in the grass and looked up at the God of Light looming above her.

Something severe about the line of his jaw and the angles of his body. Something terrible in his height alone.

He denied her—he turned down this simple request and shackled her to a life of solitude, a mere half-life, a ghost-life.

He stood above her and denied her freedom.

There was a kind of schism, between Salem’s mind and her eyes, between her thoughts and herself. Like she couldn’t quite reach herself. She felt a warble in her brain-waves, could feel a bodily tremble that refused to calm itself, and she knew at once that her body did not fit her like it should, that she was somewhere else entirely, that she was then and now in the same breath.

All she wanted was freedom and fairness. Human ideals, perhaps, but of intrinsic value.

God, his face. The Brother had no face, yet all the same, in the hollows and the angles she saw her father.

She saw double when the Brother approached and she cried out—for solitude, for mercy, with fury like a wounded beast. She dragged herself from the floor on feet that were surely too far away to carry her. Her blood was a waterfall-roar in her ears and she heard nothing else; she simply ran, with all the earnest human defiance she could muster.

If he won’t help—someone else would. She was sure of it. There had to be some form of it on this world. Some form of kindness.

She was beginning to suspect all of it had died with Ozma.

The Dark Realm did not scare her. It took just over two weeks to travel there and in that time she gathered her thoughts.

She was pursued by the ghost of her father. A haunting she had kept at bay since the tower fell, by virtue of Ozma’s hand in her own. She had turned a blind eye to that howling specter and looked at Ozma instead but now there wasn’t anyone standing between herself and the past.

She was cut down once by the blades of parentage. Once by the injustice of Death. And once more by the God who should see her plight.

Salem couldn’t feel her body anymore. She was numb from head to foot. Her hands weren’t shaking anymore, even as her knuckles went white around the staff. She lived only inside her own head, cloistered away at the top of the tower called her body.

She knew now: there were two roads. Either she brought Ozma home, or she gave chase. That was reality. She had been diverted from her path in Holy Saros, by Ozma’s hands and eyes and nervous smile, but now—without them—why should she linger?

To die would be an awfully big adventure, they said, speaking in the voice of her own thoughts.

But then she was holding them in her arms. She knelt by the Dark Lake and in her arms—Ozma, alive, warm, breathing. Eyes open. Terrified, but—“It’s all right. It’s all right! I’m here, Ozma, I’m—”

And they heard her voice and turned their face into her embrace and took a quivering breath, holding on tightly, reassured.

Tears pricked in her eyes. The bond between her soul and her body was reformed in an instant, stitched together by rough makeshift stitches, woven back into one being. Raw with joy, disbelief, gratitude.

“Thank you,” she whimpered, feeling Ozma’s arms holding on to her, squeezing them tightly in return. “Thank you.”

But she scented the blood of her father’s phantom in the air and snapped to attention as if expecting punishment when she felt the warmth of light on her skin. It was a ghosting of old bruises. It was a prickle she knew, a bristling like insects in her skin, boiling her down to base instinct: fight or flight, kill or be killed.

It was not Salem who was killed.

* * *

Water.

Light.

Unfair.

Fuck you.

Salem choked and coughed and cursed, watching as bones broken by the water’s surface mended themselves together before her very eyes. They bent in ways bone should not, returning to the sanctuary of her skin, forging themselves back together.

“What have you done?” she demanded, staring at fingers settling back into place, a glow like a halo around her skin. _“What did you do to me?”_

**You are immortal.**

“Immortal—?”

**You cannot die.**

**You cannot be with your beloved.**

**You cannot be free.**

**You cannot die.**

Unfair.

“What?” Salem rose to her feet, slowly as a fledgling still unsure of its own wings. The impulse to stand and fight was stronger than the one to crawl and grovel. As the bright-violet bruises of her plummet faded into sickly yellow and then nothing, she took furious steps towards them, squaring her shoulders: “You can’t do this. It isn’t fair. I didn’t—”

**Arrogant.**

**You presume yourself our master?**

**You demand our obedience?**

**You presume yourself higher than God?**

**Arrogant.**

They refused her approach. Mid-step, she found herself elsewhere, transported through space in an instant. She stumbled over her own feet, surprise knocking her flat, and as she laid in the dirt she could taste the first supple tones of vitriol.

* * *

Salem walked, leaning on Ozma’s staff like an old man weighed down by his decades, heavy and drawn as if the earth itself was pulling her down. She found her way back to civilization. She found the limits of her body, or the lack thereof.

For weeks on end, she had not eaten. She had not had any water. She had merely walked. 

She still felt hunger and thirst, of course. She felt tired. Her body had slowly collapsed, consuming of itself for nutrients until she sank to her knees in the tall yellow grass, unable to move on. The world blurred at the edges.

When she awoke, she felt healthy once more. Strong. Like a clock had been reset, like time had turned itself backwards for her alone.

She was able to get up, and to keep walking.

Immortal. A death by starvation was nothing. It ached and destroyed her and then she rose again.

So they had told her the truth.

* * *

They weren’t the only ones capable of telling the truth.

Salem spent three months or so familiarizing herself with her altered body. She took work far too dangerous and collected payment high above her grade. She died, and died, and died, and yet, simply would not die.

She remembered fondly when she had two choices: each one to reunite with Ozma, whether in this world or the next. How naïve the day, believing she would be permitted something as merciful as death. Oh, she had tried; at length, she tried it, in every fashion conceivable to her. She was rotten inside and out and could think of a fair share of ways to destroy a human body. That’s how she spent those months; paying for lodging with money she earned off her own death. No job was too hard. It didn’t mean anything. She had more endurance than any other living thing. She accepted bounties and beast-hunts and always, always outpaced. Outlasted. Out-killed.

A Grimm could tear her apart fifteen times; she only had to retaliate once.

She malingered in Holy Saros like a ghost. It was where she had settled with Ozma, and she felt uneasy leaving it behind. Saros was her home now, for better or for worse, and even though Ozma was everywhere in it, she couldn’t bear to leave it.

Instead, she stayed, holed up at night like a ghost in the shadows of her own home, and thought.

She felt as though she had learned more than one ugly truth. She had learned something intrinsic and devastating. She had learned perhaps the most important truth of all.

That she had been right. That Gods—for all their grandieur and worship—did not care. That they were foolish and just as lowly emotional as the humans they pretended to lord over.

She had tricked them. Manipulated them. She had started a squabble between supreme beings like two children fighting over a toy.

The truth she had learned was so dark and sweet-tasting, she could not stop thinking about it. Rich like chocolate and wine and dark berries, just as wondrous as them all. The truth was that the Gods were fallible. That they could be fooled, and played, and conquered.

They had told her the truth about her body. She figured it was only fair, then, that she tell the truth about their minds.

They wanted unity, they would get unity. After three months that was the conclusion Salem reached. They were so foolishly conquerable, so childishly ignorant of their own shortcomings; yet they dared demand loftier standards of her and humanity? She would show them a united front; she would show them harmony; and the banner uniting humanity would be stained in God’s blood.

Thus began her new journey. She left the devout Great And Holy Saros behind, carrying little more than the clothes on her back and the tools of her trade—she had long since switched the needle and thread for the silvered blade. She was assembling forces for a war now. There was no longer any room for softer pursuits.

She went by foot, chatting with every human she passed like a traveling prophet. She headed for the palaces; for the governments, the kings and the queens. Her words seeded themselves.

She stood at the gates of Mascon once more, its industry pumping out smoke like her heart bled grief and fury. This place had not felt friendly to them before; now, Salem moved to assimilate it. It had become the new seat of a minor kingdom; fresh-faced lords eager for more power, for a cause to fight for. It had grown to assert control over neighboring regions; minor lords enjoying the protection of their new king while reaping benefits from their own lands, in exchange for obeying the king’s law and fighting by his side if Mascon came under fire. 

So she laid out her tale before Mascon’s king. She told the complete truth and nothing but. Her story from beginning to end. The unjust nature of Gods, and their flaws. That immortality could be attained—she had already been cursed with it. And that, following Salem, humanity could free itself from its selfish rulers, stand alone, and become stronger for it.

They asked for proof and she gutted herself like a fish on the royal carpet, soiling it with her blood to cries of horror—cries that, very quickly, became gasps of awe. Her blood tasted like salvation and strength. It reeked the copper and gore of truth.

They swore allegiance, to fight at her side should she need them. They swore justice; for themselves, for her, for humanity. Salem received their gifts; a show of wealth and good-will. Mascon offered her precious metals and a tithe. She told them to store the metals, and to distribute the money to their people. The only thing she took from Mascon was a certificate stamped with every governing seal of the region; proof of their alliance to her.

As silent as she had come, Salem slipped away in the night, returning to the road. The world grew cooler around her as she moved northward still, past Mascon and to where her story began.

It had been years since she departed Aphelion. The city stood the same as she remembered it; the map she had memorized from eternal nights staring at it from above had not changed. Standing down in the city, Salem cast her eyes up the hill, almost all the way up to the stars to see the tower cresting above. The sight coiled in her gut like spoiled milk. Gooseflesh rippled across her body. She felt sick and damaged by just looking at it, looming as ever—even if she was seeing it from below this time.

She asked around the city, inquiring about its current position. Her father had governed this area; in his absence, where was Aphelion?

At the tavern, she stood like a white shadow at the counter, feeling like her own existence was wavering just from being in this town. Still, her voice betrayed nothing; she asked her questions and explained her reasons with firm ease.

She hadn’t been prepared for the tavernmaster to recognize her.

“You,” he said, wonder in his eyes, “You’re the girl in the tower.”

Salem tried not to grimace. “Maybe.”

“Thank you,” he said, and Salem blanked on a response. “You saved this place. It’s been years, I know, but we could never forget. Thank you.”

It was a bit of a struggle, but Salem summoned forth a smile. “I wasn’t alone,” she said. “Who is in charge now? Is Aphelion still self-governing?”

Thankfully, the tavernmaster did not dwell on the first topic, more than happy to follow her into the next and explain everything that had happened since she left. He told her about the scramble to reestablish a sound governing body after the fall of the old tyrant. About the candidates, about where they each had ended up going next. He explained that the old castle on the hill was still the seat of power for this region, but that Aphelion was no longer alone. It had joined forces with remnants of another nation—one that had once been far larger and more prosperous than Aphelion, but which had become nothing.

What remained of Umbra’s people had joined itself with Aphelion and a handful of other city-states, creating the Umbral Alliance. Its territory spanned from the coast, where Umbra had once stood (and where the saplings of a new town had been laid into the earth), to the arid fields of Aphelion and northward, into the tall mountain peaks near the pole. A large swathe of land, but it was mostly only that—land. None of it particularly fertile or densely populated. The Alliance had little power, comparatively speaking, to the forces of Holy Saros and the eastward queendoms Rille and Palus. Even the newborn Kingdom of Mascon had more political sway, thanks to its industry and military. Still, that did not matter much. Salem was out to obtain the alliance of every faction on the planet; no matter how strong or weak, no matter how young or old.

She received free lodgings above the tavern for her good deeds. She spent the night by the hearth, among the people, being recognized by every other patron who came in through the door; it was like a celebration, and the free round of drinks made them all the more willing to hear her truth. The tavern-goers supported her. They were eager for her to see the head of the Umbral Alliance and speak with him. They wanted to be more than this; to have the freedom to bloom, without anyone, even God, holding them back.

Salem made her way to the castle in the morning. The hill was unfriendly and steep but she never faltered. Her last memory of these gardens was of that starlit night when the smell of blood was acrid and the only sight was of the bodies strewn throughout it; now, it was lush and fresh. It was green and alive and it was cared for like it never had been before. The land itself was healing here.

Requesting audience was easy enough, with the seals of Mascon and its territoires already at her back. The pot was sweetened still by the murmurs coming up from the streets of Aphelion, telling the story of who she was. Even the guardsmen gave her respectful bows as they showed her through to those familiar halls.

Sitting where her father once had was an elderly man draped in sea-blue and green. The head of the Umbral Alliance was himself Umbran, lucky enough to have been outside of the city when it fell. When he saw her, his face lit up with interest. No doubt he had already heard a preliminary spiel about her; the princess returning to her castle, years after liberating it from her own father. The woman returning alone, with no army, with no war in her hands; only a story and a plea.

He looked at her kindly and asked her why she had come. Salem began her story; at the beginning, as usual, explaining how she came to reach the end she had. Like always, she told him everything. The unfair, the bad, and the truth. She showed her certificate from Mascon, with all the seals supporting her, and she offered to prove her claims of immortality.

The man was silent the entire time. When she was finished, and rolled up her certificate to put it away in her inner pocket, he finally cleared his throat and spoke.

“Ozma,” he said, “is dead?”

And Salem at once understood, knowledge spearing her through—she bit back the pain, sinking to her knees before the throne, and said: “My condolences, Sir. I had hoped to deliver the news to their family some gentler way, but I could never find you.”

That was a lie, of course; she had never searched. But seeing his face, despite her own grievances, she felt a lie would be kinder.

Ozma’s father told her to raise her head. “I am the only one left,” he said. “It is no wonder you could not find us. Please, stand up. Thank you for telling me everything. Thank you for wanting to help us, even after everything you’ve been through.”

Salem smiled, even though all she could think about was how hurt Ozma had been by their family; how they both had suffered at the hands of their parents. She said nothing of it, and refused any material gifts to prove their allegiance; all she requested was a document confirming it, marked with the seal of every lord in the Umbral Alliance.

“Anything for you,” was what he said, reaching for her hands. “Anything for you.”

The message was quickly spread to the rest of the Alliance, and by the week’s end, Salem had her documents in hand.

She left Aphelion fast, at night, like a thief who had already gotten what they came for and had no reason to malinger. Like a spy. Like she had been far, far behind enemy lines. The city haunted her back, with its towers and its fathers and its chokehold on Salem’s past.

She hitched a ride on a trade caravan heading to the East, and sat in the back of a cart examining her papers. She was quite pleased to have Mascon and the Alliance at her side; it would come in great handy in convincing Rille and Palus. At the end, once she had those in hand, the Great And Holy Saros would no doubt accept as well.

Yes; Holy Saros would be an unbelievably difficult target, as she was now. She had left it without trying. She would return with the rest of humanity behind her; she would collect Saros last, returning home with the world watching over her.

She put her seals away and struck up a conversation with the convoy. She proved herself to them and they asked why she was alone. Why someone like her would travel like this, and not with her own entourage. She could travel like a princess if she wanted, they thought. She could travel like a diplomat, or an archbishop.

Salem shrugged and smiled and said, “Well, if something is worth doing well, you may as well do it alone.”

* * *

The queendom of Rille was in a unique position, wedged politically between the Holy Saros and the queendom of Palus. Saros had some amount of control in the region, and demanded Rille follow its precepts; at the same time, Rille was under pressure from their more aggressive neighbor, Palus, with whom they had extensive trade agreements. Saros did not like Palus and wanted Rille to end relations with it; Rille did not like Saros, but did not have the will to stand against it.

Keeping Palus and Rille together would be ideal for now; the queendoms had an extensive history as sister nations, and uniting them would be easier than getting either of them to cooperate with Holy Saros. Given Rille’s vast wealth in crops and minerals, and Palus’s military might, they were both forces to be reckoned with; historically, war with one of them meant war with both of them. Still, Palus was currently exerting its pressure over Rille to try and make it sever ties with Holy Saros, an action which no doubt would escalate tensions between the two; even with Palus’s support, Rille was not eager to go to war.

So, it was decided: Salem went to the queendom of Palus first. Its ruler was a firm woman, a bit too pragmatic and skeptical to accept a story like Salem’s without proof. Salem offered to let the queen’s men test her claims themselves.

The order was given haltingly; it was clear the queen suspected a trick, even though she could not fathom what kind. Three guardsmen tried for three hours to kill Salem; at the end, the queen’s own hands spilled Salem’s blood just once, to prove it to herself once and for all. Holding her close, the queen plunged her own blade through Salem; staining both of their robes in her blood, so close were they in that moment. The fine ruby-set sword glistened red when she pulled it from Salem’s chest; it clattered to the floor as the wound sealed and the queen sank to her knees, the blood-oath sealed with just a few words from her lips. Both covered in the same blood, clothes stained dark in lymph and gore, the proof of alliance written in more than just pithy words, in the language of _true_ gods—that was how the queendom of Palus took to Salem’s side.

In Rille, she assured the softer, more diplomatic queen. They did not have to spill quite as much blood to convince her; the thought of it actually seemed to sicken the queen of Rille. If anything, she seemed most eager to seize an escape from her political dilemma. She feared war; the thought of angering Holy Saros frightened her terribly, but she also feared Palus’s retribution if she did not comply with their demands. She felt the queendom was stuck between two threats, neither of which it wanted to contend with.

Salem told her at length about her agreements with Palus, Mascon, and the Alliance; she promised that Rille would be safe from Saros’s wrath, and that Saros would no doubt agree and join the same side in time. They spoke at length together about the future; where humanity would be free, no longer hopelessly watching its kin wither under the rule of gods who did not care. Indeed, they dreamed together until day broke anew, rising over the queendom like a second promise.

With the unification of the kingdom of Mascon, the Umbral Alliance, and the neighbor queendoms Rille and Palus, most of the world was in agreement: that Salem’s truth was the new testament, that humanity would stake their claim, and if they had to, fight for their right to be more.

Salem rode back to Saros, across the entire world, and everywhere she turned she was recognized and hailed like a general. Like a queen. Like a true god. All of those, and more. She was the immortal woman, the indomitable, inconquerable, merciful savior. She who had tasted God’s injustice first-hand and returned to warn her people. Borders of kingdoms and governance meant little; they were all her people, every last one, even as she stepped back into Holy Saros.

Saros, being the nearest place to the Realm of Light, was the only human state still leaving offerings at the altar. They worshiped in flowers and water and wine, in offerings of fruit and barley. When Salem strode across the city threshold once again, a shudder went through Saros, as though it felt the presence of the new order already seizing its citizens’ hearts. She walked through the city, the capital that had been her home for the past few years, the first and last place she had ever felt the will to live inside herself. Her reputation preceded her even as she walked on foot through its streets; people came out to see her, to get even just one eyeful of this woman, who once was nobody, and now held more political power than any other single human. Who had not started a single war to obtain it. The woman who, with words alone, had united the entire world.

Flowers, wine, and fruit were all well and good, Salem thought. They were human offerings, given to a half-god of no higher standing than any other man. She had learned, in her travels, that real gods require blood-vows; rivers of it, enough for a nation to drink, to the knees or higher still. She walked a path forged in those vows, darker than wine, and knew it as truth: this bond was stronger than one made in water and barley. She had swayed humanity’s hearts, and God could never sway them back.

She spent a night in her own home. Under candlelight, she laid out every document, every seal. She beheld them all. Minor lords and powerful queens alike had tied their hearts to hers. Governors and kings and bishops. She remembered all their names by the seals alone now. Their faces, even. All human, all hers. She did not feel like their leader, although she supposed she had become just that. To her, they were equals. Fighting for the same ideas, against the same injustice. They were human. They all belonged to each other, like the world itself belonged to all of them. They were hers, and she was theirs, and they had no more patience to give for the haughty Other.

Pride swelled in her as she examined all the seals, all the letters. Pride in herself, and pride in humanity. United, they were better than the Brothers had ever been—the Brothers, whose inability to work together had created this injust world to begin with. She held each document in her hands and laid them out again, thinking of the people she had met and spoken with. Each belonging to themselves, and all to each other, as one united brotherhood. Working carefully, Salem stitched every parchment together, overlapping the edges like a patchwork quilt. She worked until her eyes burned from the dark’s strain. When the sun began to rise desert-hot over Saros, she finally rested.

The pages, held together by needle and waxed thread, formed a vast tapestry woven in vows and trust. It was a patchwork flag of her achievements, of her alliances, of her people’s unity. It was a full arm-span wide, fingertip to fingertip, and just as long. Some seals shared a page; some regions gave her one for each lord. Some were pressed in wax, or black ink, or colored pigments. Some were drawn by hand. They depicted landmarks or weapons or even animals and plants of the region; personal crests and coats of arms in every shape and design. In the clutter and chaos of it all, she saw something uniquely human.

She folded it along the seams and took it with her to the head seat of Saros, the capital of the southern continent, where it sat at the top of the city like a crouching animal. She could tame it; she felt certain of that. Nobody stopped her as she entered; the guards stepped aside and let her through without a word. She walked with ease in her step, confidence apparent. The doors to the grand audience chamber were opened for her before she need ask.

The heart of Saros was ready to let her in.

Standing before a room of councilmen and bishops, Salem unfolded her tapestry of pages, holding it aloft to them, and said: “These are the lords in my alliance. These are the nations who follow behind me. We cannot lose. Have a look.”

They approached her, murmuring to one another, to get a closer view. She stood unmoving, gaze unyielding. Pride swelled in her chest.

“I have heard of your journey,” one man said. “You did all this without war. Without conflict. Alone. I have heard what they call you. And yet, seeing you before me, I don’t believe it.”

“I can prove it,” Salem said. “Everything you have heard, I can prove. I know my story precedes me, but I assure you, it is nothing but the truth.”

Another councilman seemed almost afraid of her tapestry. “Every lord,” he mumbled to himself, “Every nation. Every power in the world has written you their approval. Who _are_ you?”

“I am—” Salem paused briefly, then finally smiled. “I am—just Salem. My lords, if it pleases you all, I should like to add Great And Holy Saros to our alliance. Will you hear my story?”

They had already heard it, second-hand; still, every person in the room agreed, and took their seats to listen. The great tapestry was draped over the table for all to see and Salem stood in the middle of the floor, telling once more that long story. It had never stopped feeling vulnerable and painful; but those feelings had become her greatest allies here. In peeling herself raw before an audience, she gained their trust. Their sympathy. And their righteous indignation when they realized they, too, were subject to the same world order that had destroyed her. She told the story from beginning to end, metaphorically bleeding out on their carpet without a single weapon touching her, and when she was finished she felt exhausted like she always did.

“And if you desire proof,” she said, opening her arms, “I invite any one of you to attempt to strike me down. I will not die. Everything I have told you is the truth.”

“We believe you,” they said. “And Great Saros will fight at your side, should you need us.”

Salem smiled, bowed, and thanked them graciously. The new seals added an entire row to the paper tapestry.

* * *

It had taken her about a year to gather the world. Now, she sent messengers for every representative she had spoken to; asked them to assemble in Great Saros, and to bring their men.

There was no more war in this world. Every nation was united under one banner, for one cause, and had laid their scuffles aside. Now they once again gathered up arms—but they did so together, against a unified foe.

A few weeks after sending her couriers, Salem had leaders and battalions from every nation gathered to her side in Great Saros. She met with their representatives, all in the same room; the prime minister and archbishop of Great Saros, the queens of Rille and Palus, and the leader of the Umbral Alliance, all sitting by the same table together. They all watched Salem, ardently; she explained her plan.

They would go to the gods. They would demand their freedom. If it was not given, if it came to conflict, they would fight and kill their oppressors.

The leaders at the table nodded vigorously. By now, even Ozma’s once-devout Umbran father agreed without qualms. Even the archbishop of the Great And Once-Holy Saros spoke out with enthusiastic support. Even the soft-hearted queen of Rille agreed: if bloodshed was inevitable, they would shed as much as it took.

Salem thanked them all for their support and loyalty, and they declined her thanks; they thanked her instead, holding her hands and bowing their heads to her. She was venerated as a saint among them; the one human who had seen the truth and decided to share it.

The meeting did not break, even as day did; they stayed around that table, dining together and talking, each positing their dreams and plans for the future. Outside, in the city, thousands of soldiers slept and waited and comisserated, all comrades now. The days of human war were behind all of them now.

At around midday, when the Saros sun was at its midpoint in the sky and scorching the earth like a furious god, the allied lords and their leader finally stepped out of their meeting hall. Arms around each other, prepared for anything, they promised each other victory.

And then, after doing everything in their human power to prepare, the united force of humanity moved as one; to the Light Realm, to its God. They trampled the barley and fruit and stood before the two Gods, armed with their demands.

The Gods were furious. All mankind beheld their gigantic, beastly forms; the teeth and the violence, the war-hunger humanity had already set aside. Snarling, they spoke:

**Who has led you down this path?**

**Who has turned your hearts against us?**

**Who do you answer to, disobedient child?**

The mass of people parted like a stream before a rock to let Salem through. The people smiled at her when she passed. She stood beside the representatives; the named leaders of all of humanity. Banners from every corner of the world whipped in the wind as she stared her tormentors down for the second time.

It was clear that both Gods recognized her. The rasping beast-breath and fury intensified at the sight of her. They looked at her and saw nothing but trampled barley and disobedience. Nothing but sheer gall, to go against her superiors. The Dark Brother lunged for her, unstoppable in his wrath, before she could speak a single word—before she could even attempt to lay out the details of the alliance and their cause. She had not expected them to listen, but she had, at the very least, hoped they would let her speak at all.

Salem had to dash out of harm’s way to escape being crushed, still determined to last through this meeting. She gathered up her own magic, preparing to retaliate, and with all her senses buzzing at the edges of her consciousness she felt the gooseflesh ripple up her back at the sensation of hundreds of others doing the same. Indeed, with just that first clawed strike, all tension broke and humanity answered in kind; summoning thousands of people’s worth of magic, a rallying cry going up, and both queens turned and bellowed: _“Fire!”_

Magic hailed through the air, streaking like a meteor shower, loud and bright and then—

Nothing.

**Stupid.**

**Ignorant humanity, playing with forces it does not understand.**

**My own gift to them, used against me?**

Her vision vibrated; the magic in the air was rattling her eyeballs in her skull. Her teeth chattered in her jaw like they were about to fall out. Salem saw the Light God turn away as though he had no power whatsoever to stop the inevitable retaliation—as the air crackled with magic, as it all gathered ineffective in the claws of the very God who had once bestowed it, he turned his face away as though blameless. Fury welled within her, but even stronger than fury was fear; she threw herself over the people she could reach, holding them to her chest desperately as if she could protect them—the two queens, she realized, moments before the world went white and her body exploded into millions of insignificant particles.

It was the longest Salem had ever been dead.

It took several minutes before her body even began to reconstruct itself. In the vacuum and heat that lingered even after the explosion, any attempt her cells made at binding back together was instantly vaporized. She missed the way the planet tremored and quailed, the way its core impacted inwards on itself and spilled out of its new wounds like heart-blood. The way the atmosphere burned scalding hot for miles, boiling alive anything unfortunate enough to live inside the blast radius. She missed all of those because when she came to, when there was even a sliver of a chance for her immortality to reconstruct her body, it was all long over.

The dust of her body had mixed with humanity’s and evaporated, and unlike her, there was no trace of them. Salem was at the bottom of a large pit; so deep it became dark by the floor, unreachable by any celestial body. It was blighted and destroyed, scorched by ancestral magic far more powerful than humanity’s. She coughed, holding herself, and squinted through the still-settling dust, hoping to see anyone or anything.

She saw the Brothers, descending into the pit, landing hard on the rock and obsidian glass. Their teeth and their rage. She saw only them. Her stomach sank coldly inside her.

Oxygen was still filtering back in and Salem was dizzy, trying to conceptualize where she was, and what had happened. The air was thin, but getting richer by the second as the vacuum of magic was filled; it was making her confused and sick. But she realized one thing, quite sharply and painfully: she was alone. The others were all dead. Dead, with not even a body to bury.

**You lose.**

**You thought there was no greater punishment we could bestow upon you?**

Alone and ragged, Salem wheezed, “I’ll come back. I’ll gather forces anew and I’ll come back. I’ll tell everyone about this— _massacre_ —I’ll come back stronger. I’ll never lose.”

**You have already lost.**

**There is no one left.**

**You are all that remains.**

**You lose.**

**We will learn from this failure. I hope you will learn from yours.**

**This planet was a beautiful experiment.**

**What a shame.**

And their bodies began to dissolve; not in defeat, but in uncaring departure.

“I’m not done with you!” Salem screamed, hoarse already with tears she had not realized were spilling. “This isn’t over! Come back! I’m not—”

**Still demanding things of your creators?**

**Ignorant human child.**

Even as she was running towards them, she knew it was too late. They vanished into thin air, gone on to greener pastures, to abandon her here in the world they themselves destroyed. Her feet slid to a stop on the melted-smooth stone and she stood at the bottom of a planet-shattering crater, alone and desperate, and all she knew to do was scream.


	2. Chapter 2

She had clawed her way out of the crater. It had taken days. Her hands were slick with blood and her knees raw. It was gone by the end of the hour, but the pain was still real. She clawed her way out of the crater with claws that repeatedly broke and re-grew, on skin that scrubbed off on rocks and subterranean crystal and re-grew, with wrath that waned and re-grew.

Days. She spent days just climbing out of the hole, the apocalyptic site zero, where God had first abandoned her, where God had at last forfeited all of humanity. Its branching craters were like a spiderweb, fingers reaching far and deep from the initial impact site. Beyond, out in the atmosphere, she could see chunks of rock between her world and its orbiting body. The bright planet in the sky was still complete, as pristine as always, and she stared at it hopelessly from her own broken world.

Salem was alone.

She wandered from the crater, in some vain hope that the Brothers lied, that they had said it to be cruel or that they had somehow missed someone—but she knew by now that the Gods did not need to _say_ cruel things. No; they freely _did_ cruel things.

The first century after the destruction of humanity was quiet as the grave. As if the world itself had been shaken to the core—and it had, blown apart like fragile glass. There was nothing but destruction wherever she went. The impact had shaken the planet to the core, and on its surface, no building remained standing. It all had collapsed, a field of sticks and broken slabs of stone, only rubble and the memory of life.

Great Saros was no more. It stood too close. It had turned to dust. Most of the southern continent had been swallowed by the blast and vaporized; the majority was crater-pit and spilled planet-blood. Further beyond, the remnants of the new Umbra were desolate and flooded. Aphelion’s towers had fallen, its buildings matchsticks. Even vastly north, on the opposite side of the planet from the Light God’s altar, nothing stood. In the east, the queendoms of Rille and Palus were empty, kneeling to the destruction they had never seen coming.

Animals remained, in the far-off reaches where the earthquake had been survivable. The ecosystem was changing around her as the air grew wane and unfriendly. The planet was slowly decaying, decade by decade. Godless. Abandoned by its keeper. A garden without its gardeners.

_An experiment._

The sheer gall filled her with vitriol the likes of which she had never known. It was all she could think of for the first hundred years. The devaluation of her life, of all human life, into nothing more than a whim, nothing more than _experiment_ —to abandon a toy once it lost its shine.

Salem refused to be insignificant.

They may have cut the ropes and left her to drift, abandoned boat on an endless ocean as she was—but she refused to go unnoticed. Refused to fade, to become oblivion. The planet she walked may be dying, may be crumbling apart and dimming away, but she was still there. Still alive. She would burn brighter than the stars beyond. Bright enough that no one would ever look past her. She would burn the eyes out of any God who looked her way.

A hundred years. She counted each day.

All alone.

Animals shied from her, as wild animals did. Grimm attacked when they saw her. She fought back, on some days. Some days she let them have their fill. It didn’t matter. There was something hidden in the mauling, like a distant buzz of knowledge, like something she had not quite realized yet. To be enveloped by darkness, subsumed by the ichorbeast, torn apart on tooth and claw—there was something in it that she couldn’t quite grasp yet. Something that teased the senses with a longing, a _what if_ that she could not place.

Then her body would reform and she would lose it. She would get up. Keep walking.

By the third century, the lands around her were wild and unkempt. The plants were strange and different, clinging to life in their newfound ways, but all the same reclaiming the world around them. Animals were dying fast—first went the large herbivores, driven out by the poison earth, by the unfriendly vegetation. The earth was making itself inedible. Larger predators began to die after that. One by one, species around her dwindled and disappeared.

It was not the disappearance of humanity that did it, Salem knew. It was the disappearance of God. It was the abandonment, the earth-shattering, the massive quake and the extinction and the sheer fucking GALL of it all that drove the planet to consume itself and be destroyed.

Five. Five hundred. She counted each day. Each year. Each decade. Humanity had been dead for five hundred years. The Brothers had been gone for five hundred years. She walked, on bare feet, with raw lungs, until she collapsed at the foot of the Dark Realm.

Her aches were healed. Her body remembered its health. She got up, climbing the stairs two at a time, dragging her now ancient mind up and ever up. The crags of rock and dark-violet crystal were treacherous here—a single slip and one might fall to their death here, be impaled on the landscape itself. Of course, Salem would not die.

Would not.

Would never.

But maybe she could fix that. Could change that. Maybe she could…

It was the secret laid into the Grimm. Their ichor, their darkness, their animal drive for destruction. It was the poison of the Dark Brother. She had realized it once in her death throes. Covered in the sludge of their darkness, choking on the smoke, she had realized: Darkness incarnate. Darkness absolute. Dark eternal.

If that couldn’t drive the Light from her body, then—what could?

So she pursued its source. The Brother’s Grimm all spawned from the same water, crawling out of that wound in the landscape, that torn-up festering trap of claws and spikes—the Dark Brother’s own realm.

She needed much of it. Needed submersion. She needed to do to herself what the God of Light had done to her, all those centuries ago—but in the dark. She had to fight fire with fire, she realized, had to take darkness into herself and consume it fully, so that it may smother and extinguish the light He had lit in her.

Salem felt her head all in a haze. It was difficult to exactly pin down the feelings she felt, these days. She was as numb as she had been, centuries ago, in that tower—merely surviving day by day, never truly alive. She recognized at some level that she had shut it off herself, that she divorced herself cleanly from the difficult parts and kept her eyes locked on the eternal journey ahead—but did it matter at all what did it to her? Did it matter, as long as she didn’t feel the pain? As long as she could keep moving, did it matter at all?

It didn’t. It didn’t matter.

It was the five-hundred and twenty-fourth year since the fall of humanity and Salem stood on the precipice looking out. She stood on a large outcropping of craggy rock that cast its shadow over the impenetrable depths of the Dark Lake, surrounded by jagged land and the howling wind and no life. No life. Only Grimm—and God only knew if those were truly alive at all.

She had to smother this light. Had to rid herself of this curse. She was spinning on the idea as if with a fever, as if she could not think straight at all, as if it was the only thing her faltering sensibility could recall. As if it was the only saving grace in this hell. She had to choke this light she did not want, had to counter it somehow, to blanket herself in darkness and never emerge.

She didn’t feel anything. Salem exhaled, letting go of all the air in her lungs, all the things her body may use to cling to life, and stepped off the precipice.

The surface hit her like a wall but she went through, with broken bones and stinging flesh. She went through carelessly, eyes closed, eagerly breathing in the darkness. For a second, the pressure against her injured body was deeply promising. It felt like death. It truly, for the first time, felt like Death.

But she was wrong.

Death was there, yes. It was with her. Death ran its hands along her face and said _what a pity._ It looked into her eyes, into her mind, into her very soul and said _what a shame_.

A hundred claws upon her. The Dark Lake _wanted_ her, so badly it seemed to tear her heartstrings asunder—it _wanted_ to have her, to destroy her, as badly as the God himself wanted to smother his Brother’s light. It wanted so badly, it yearned for nothing more than to kill her light and snuff her life out.

Death went through her, pierced her flesh and rent her skin and looked inside and said _I can’t._

But there was one thing Death could do to her, one single olive branch of the Dark Lake, the sole gift—it looked at her, and she opened her eyes in the darkness and thought she saw it too. Death looked at her and the Dark Lake reached for her and as she choked on the water it filled her, contaminating stomach and lungs and intestines, nose and mouth burning as she coughed around it. It was a flood; it was a torrent; it cascaded through her body in lieu of death, yet also in lieu of life. This was something else. This was something in between. It drowned her senses, diluted the pain until she felt nothing at all. It sedated the body and ensnared the mind, feeding her not with the satisfaction she had asked for, but with new hunger.

Hunger.

That’s the name of it.

She’s got a hunger in her. It’s empty; it’s hollow; it’s craving.

She knows very few things. Her name is Salem, of course. She cannot die. She has not died. And she’s insatiable.

INSATIABLE—is such a pleasant word, she thinks. HUNGRY. INEXHAUSTIBLE.

Her claws strike the bottom of the pool and the world swims inside her head. Dark knowledge. Deep knowledge. She’s got a body that won’t die and a brain that can’t stop thinking of new sin. She’s done her transgressions and she wants to do more. The world burning around her couldn’t sate this. Only the divorced head of a God can sate this.

Her claws break against the sides of the pool as she drags herself back out. She doesn’t feel the pain at all. She’s been numbed of the last sense she had control over. Physical agony was her last straw, her last rein of mastery—yes, she had been its master. Had controlled when it came to her. Controlled the depth and length and severity. Now, she doesn’t feel it at all.

Her claws gouge the earth, on the bank of the pool at last, and she heaves herself free of the cloying water. Its got a longing in it, like it can’t bear to see her go. Like they were made for one another.

But that’s not true. That’s not true, is it? There was only ever one she was made for.

Salem gets her feet under her and stands up and the Grimm raise their heads in unison. A thousand ears pricking as she rises. Salem spits black, heaves up the last bits of liquid darkness, and the Grimm are uneasy, uncertain.

She understands innately. Their old master is gone, long gone, centuries gone. They have nothing and nobody. Just like her, they’ve been left to roam this place, aimlessly, helplessly, infinitely.

But she’s taken the Dark Lake into herself. She’s become the closest thing to the Grimm’s old master. She has the magic He gifted humanity; she has the Dark Lake inside. She has the will and the power to tear the world apart. She has the HUNGER.

Salem rises to her full height, ramrod like a queen, and the Grimm obey without second thought. They see in her a destroyer, a world-ender, a master.

She likes that. She quite likes that. To be followed, to be respected. Obeyed.

She likes the control.

Salem looks at her reflection in the lake and cannot muster shock. Her skin and hair have gone bone-white, her eyes grave-black and blood-red, but she can't quite gather enough emotion to feel surprise.

She rolls her tongue over her teeth and finds fangs.

Salem looks up at the sky and sees that pristine planet orbiting and wonders if there are other places out there, in the universe—less lonely places, less broken places. She wonders if they have living things on them. Things with blood. Things that bleed red and can be killed.

She wonders if they have Gods.

Stumbling over her feet, Salem leaves the Dark Realm, followed by an entourage of yipping Grimm. They are excited, she thinks, to have a new master at last. She walks until she meets the sea, and there she sits, for a long time—indescribably long, until she can’t remember anymore how long. She’s thinking. Thinking hard and deep about the nature of this world and its tormentors.

Surely there has to be more. The God of Light said they were moving on. They were not so peaceful, those Gods, to never toy with lesser beings again. They would have another place, another toy. She has to find them, to get to them somehow. Has to build herself strong enough to hurt them.

She wonders what other worlds are like and feels a sting of something indescribable, and she decides to name it loneliness. It seems the most apt. She is trapped here on a prison planet with nobody around but the Grimm. Trapped and lonely.

But she is strong. She could become stronger. She has the Curse upon her and the Dark Lake inside her. She can use them. She knows she can use them.

The sea is dying when she opens her eyes. She can feel it. She can feel every individual living thing like a gnat on her skin. She can sense them dying out. All the creatures and fish and even smaller lifeforms are dying in the sea.

She looks around and the plants have begun to change again. They grow smaller. Wane. She can see no animals, of any size. She barely sees insects.

Soon the world is barren. She’s been walking circles trying to figure out a plan. The world has gone BARREN and nobody gives a SHIT about it, about her, about this planet anymore, she KNOWS that—she knows it, so she has to find out how to LEAVE.

It’s been over a thousand years but Salem has no idea how many more it’s going to be.

She’s still counting them, and that’s her mistake.

Oh, she should never have counted. To count is what breaks humans. To know how long one waits—that’s what makes the wait unbearable.

But that’s okay.

thats okay.

She’ll figure out a way to get off this godforsaken rock, to cross its broken shards and leave. She’ll traverse interstellar space if she has to. She’ll close the distance between planets and stars if that’s what it takes.

In the meantime she’s gonna try things out. She’s gonna see what this Dark Lake can do for her. She’s gonna learn.

So she rides back there on the back of an ancient Grimm, one which has sat at her side for over five hundred years and watched the sea while she contemplated. It carries her with ease and without complaint and she steps down at the steps to the Dark Lake and dips one hand in.

The coldness is a friend. It doesn’t hurt, but it does prickle as if it SHOULD.

“What do you have?” she mumbles to it. “What’s inside you? What did He leave in you?”

With her arms submerged to the elbow in the water she closes her eyes and summons up the power it’s left inside her. It sits around her heart like a worm in an apple and she draws it out, exposes all the foul things that now dwell inside her, and the Lake responds.

It creates something.

She pulls from its depths a new creation. She’s made something. The Dark Lake spits it out—it’s Grimm, certainly Grimm, but it’s not like any Grimm she has seen. It’s new.

It isn’t viable.

The Grimm’s twisted legs can’t carry it and its eyes have not formed right. It screams at her but its voice is nothing but a mangled noise of wet, bubbling blood. It’s blind and it’s thrashing and it’s in pain, apparently in pain, she has no idea if they can even feel pain. It kicks out fruitlessly, exposed ribs swaying in the air like searching spider-legs, scrambling on the ground, wheezing and gurgling, and she screws her eyes closed. It’s suffering, she thinks, and the kinship her faltering heart feels with it is horrible.

Salem urgently presses her hands against it and grits her teeth and pulls at the darkness inside her veins. The Lake reaches up towards her, touching the Grimm and feeling the divots in bone, the misplaced bone plates that are in the way of its movements, the way its claws point the wrong way and its joints don’t lock, and the Lake understands what she wants to do.

Slowly, one by one, she fills out the gaps. She remakes.

The Grimm does not die. It calms under her hands as if it realizes. As if it knows: she is its master, not its assailant.

It does not die.

She mends it.

The Grimm stands before her, shaking lake water from its oily fur. Its alive, and its new, and she wonders: what else can she make? What more?

She looks into the lake, and spends centuries more in the grasp of it.

Time stretches out before her, immovable and immaterial. Time eternal. Time is a flat loop she remains ever fated to walk. Time marches on madly, spinning forward around her, and she's losing time.

Salem closes her eyes and a year passes. Hours pass in her heart-rhythm, between blinks. Time is grinding against her skin, sanding her sanity down like the ocean polishes stones—relentlessly, slowly, meticulously, endlessly. She is tumbled in the current and altered.

She counts feverishly as if losing count means losing herself.

One two—three thousand, all of a sudden. Three thousand six hundred, eleven thousand eight hundred, one hundred and fifty-six thousand seven hundred thirty-two.

The planet is barren. She can't quite remember her own name anymore.

Her creations are strong. She's bent the edges of physics. She's pulled apart the laws of this abandoned world. She's made Grimm that even the Brother would not. She's made a family of bones and spikes and teeth the likes of which no living thing has ever seen.

Colossal as mountains. Tall as clouds. Long as time itself.

She buries herself in the crater and dreams away a millennium. Doesn't need sleep but feels better after it.

Anyway—she's made Grimm that

She is alone. Very alone. Totally alone. There's not even plants on this dusty earth. Not even life

she's made Grimm that can conquer anything. Even the dark-matter spaces in space matter little. She knows it is so FAR AWAY but she also knows this: her Grimm are bigger than anything. She's laid power into them that only this broken place can sustain.

It's something about the air she thinks

the air and the chemicals

Like maybe Grimm thrive better in no oxygen?

Something like that she thinks may be the case

.

She doesn't really know and can't really know but she knows this: there is nothing left here to burn. There is nothing left to destroy and there is nothing left to live for.

Time is spinning.

There aren't any gods here and there aren't any heroes here.

So again,

she will have to

take matters into her own hands

RIGHT?

Ah! Ah—oh , no , its nothing like that / it's just a matter of calculating the arc. its just a matter of matter. its physics and shes pretty fucking familiar by now with how this planet works.

yeah, it really is only a matter of determination? basically, it's the measure of her own willingness. her own resolve. if she can't do this then she may as well give up.

307,946

in human years’ time she supposes / maybe gods tell time differently? she may have to ask.

Time is spinning.

if you're still following then it's basically like this: breaking atmosphere is easy if it cannot kill you / all you need is the power to move forwards. if you can grasp that much then you already understand don't you?

she's staring at that planet up above and she can almost smell the air. its surface is verdant green and deep rich blue. it might be an illusion or a hallucination but at this point she's too addled on the idea of it to care.

she has to leave.

Time is still spinning. Even as we talk to one another, time is passing.

ozma, how long has it been? three hundr

Her eyes burn with the light from that planet. She's stared herself numb on it. Her Grimm long for it the way she longs for it.

who am i? who am i, really? who was i, back then, when we knew each other? who was i when i loved you?

three hundred ninety-six thous

**STOP TIME IF YOU CAN.**

and for the love of god

**DO NOT COUNT.**

she drags herself up the altar like a lamb for slaughter, all bloodshot and spiraling, feeling the fraying edges of her own humanity brush up against divinity. she's on the highest point of the planet, perched high above the Dark Lake, and she's ready.

It feels like a FEVER has her. It's warm and Heavy and DIZZY and it's all balled up isnside her head/¿##

(she cant feel any pain but its heavy heavy heavy like her body doesnt want to hold her head up anymore. like shes not strong enough. Her body crumbles with or without her, over and over again.)

Salem fixes her eyes on the horizon and grits her teeth against the poison air and the dusty earth and the infinity of space. Her eyes roll back when she lowers her head as if they're stuck on the sky. Black Grimm smoke is billowing around her like a sentient ocean, spewing forth from her very being as she musters every ounce of strength.

The Lake is bigger now. She's grown it.

Salem pulls and it answers.

like how a million trillion years ago God made all of it with their own hands, now im changing the rules with mine.

if you can laugh along with me the irony is that i was never closer to divinity than when i sought to defy god.

and if they ever ask me.

if they ask what i was thinking, if they ask what i truly wanted, if they ask how i could muster the willpower.

i’ll tell them about the day you fell ill.

and i'll tell them about the day humanity died.

and i’ll tell them about my father.

and maybe then they'll finally understand, when i reach the end of my story, and i tell them about the way umbra fell into the sea, its prayers unheard, its protectors absent, buckled under the weight of its own faith in gods that did not care.

you taught me that fire is clean. that fire is the only thing that can kill and remain pure.

i am not one so good as to be likened to fire.

but this fire is in that name, in your name. this fire will burn the way to freedom.

this fire is maybe the closest thing to you i still possess.

It takes every fiber of strength in Salem’s drained body to manifest the energy required. The entire lake quivers with it, surface rippling as if on beat with a massive drum.

It moves as one. It manifests and takes form. It claims life. She offers it from her open palms and the gargantuan Grimm claims it. Its eyes light up. Its body festers with black smoke and the last dredges of the lake. It absorbs the liquid into itself.

It towers above now. She's named it Lacus Invicta.

The basin of the lake is empty and Salem is dizzy. It's not just the exertion; she's dying once more. She passes away on the rocks and her body resets itself.

She's dying twice an hour now. It's been that way for god knows how many years. Millennia maybe. She's got no clue when the air became unbreathable. She's gotten better at holding her breath and choking out the symptoms but the planet is inhospitable.

She cannot stay.

The exhaustion of manifesting Lacus Invicta still burns through her veins when she comes to. She's in a haze and she can already feel her body begin to die all over again.

She reaches out with both hands and Lacus Invicta responds to her call. It's impossible to describe this Grimm in terms of human or animal—its a mess and a tangle but it most resembles Death given form. It’s as tall as a tower, as vast as a city. It’s the entirety of the Dark Lake, risen up and manifested into one solid being. It has scales as wide across as Salem is tall, it has fangs the size of trees. It has wings that blot out the sky.

It has fire. It's wreathed in fire. From under its wings, fire spills. It's generating it singlehandedly. It's got more fire and heat than the core of a planet. It's got the power to cross worlds.

Lacus Invicta sees her and acknowledges her mastery. Its eyes are like stars in their own right. It curls itself closer to her, to let her climb up on it.

She slips, dizzy and dying, and almost falls, but Lacus Invicta catches her on one of its claws and pushes her back up. There's a divot behind its head, nestled between wild forests of slick feathers and wicked horns, where it lays her down. She is safe there. She dies there.

When she comes to, Lacus Invicta is still awaiting orders, sitting rictus as a tower of neck-breaking height. She chokes on poison and gestures with a feeble hand and the Grimm shifts beneath her, crouching on its hind legs, wings unfurling.

If there had been anything left on the planet at all, the mere motion of Lacus Invicta’s wings would have pulverized it.

But there's nothing.

There's nothing.

It’s a shattered husk, and all of it is already merely dust.

Salem closes her eyes and time starts slipping. She waits for the planet above to come into view. It takes a few hours. A few deaths. That's okay.

Lacus Invicta locks its eyes on the living planet above and with one terrifying cacophony of fire and wings, it lifts itself from the empty world. Such mass should never be able to fly, but it has the expulsion of fire and its gargantuan wings and almost four hundred thousand years of Salem’s willpower behind it.

It roars in defiance of the planet’s gravitational pull. The few dozen Grimm left on the surface—those who were not melted back into the lake—howl along with it. Everything is noise and motion and Salem is dizzy and sick but she keeps her hazy eyes on the sky,

keeps her hazy eyes on freedom.


End file.
